The Linden Tree

 

Fabriano Sketchbook

8.5" x 11"

Pencil Crayon

Exciting Discoveries

 

 

While researching the English Hawthorn, I discovered a new tree native to Vancouver - the Black Hawthorn.  The Hawthorns are another member of the Rose family (remember the apple and cherry).  The author of the Nature Guide I was using thinks that she left it off because it often presents as a bush rather than a tree.

 

The Ginkgo Balboa tree is fascinating because of its age.  Flowering plants (including most deciduous trees) are the most evolved plant families of the plant kingdom.  Mosses and other nonvascular spores are the least evolved.  Between nonvascular spores and flowering plants, we find vascular spores and naked seed plants.  Included in the naked seeds category is the conifer division and the single ginkgo tree, the only surviving species of the Ginkgophyta division.  All other species in the division are now extinct.  The Ginkgo tree is often called a "living fossil".

Botanical Gelli Prints

Fabriano Sketchbook 8.5" x 11"

I've been experimenting with botanical prints made with my Gelli Plates lately.  Here I've added them to a journal page.  

Ash and elm trees are very common in Vancouver, although they are not native.  I think that I will focus on learning about the plant families that I commonly see here for now.

Learning 100 Plant Families?

Fabriano Sketchbook

8.5" x 11"

Pencil Crayon

You will see on this journal page that I am wrestling with the challenge of learning all 100 Plant Families.  Doubting my ability to stick with it.  Now that I've documented (still not quite internalized) the 7 that account for 45,000 species, do I want to do the rest?  Am I that interested?  If so, how might I proceed?

Those are the questions I've been wrestling with.  I think I'm homing in on an answer.  Stay tuned....

Field Work

Yesterday I was out learning about ash trees.  The photos I took are so much better than any art I could make LOL.  Nature is the ultimate artist!

More Plant Families

Fabriano Sketchbook

8.5" x 11"

Pencil Crayon

From Native Trees to Plant Families - Here I Begin

Fabriano Sketchbook

8.5" x 11"

While researching the native trees of Vancouver, I realized how little I know about botany.  (This is pretty sad, considering how much I enjoy being in nature.)  There are so many terms that I don't really understand, and at the top of the list is "families".   So, I decided that my next project would be to learn about Plant Families.

One of the great web sites I discovered was E-Flora BC, which is an electronic atlas of the plants of British Columbia.  They have a page on plant identification, and one of their recommendations is Thomas J. Elpel's Botany in a Day.  He explains that there are about 100 plant families across the "frost belt" of North America, and about another 30 families south of the frost line. He begins with seven of the largest and easiest to learn families which are found world-wide.

And so here I begin also.  Will I learn all 100?  I'm not sure I can manage that, but who knows.  I am pretty persistent, as evidenced by this blog. LOL

On this journal page I document my first three families.  I also connect the dots to the Tree Project by noting the eleven families to which the native trees of Vancouver belong.  So, I already have some familiarity with fourteen families!

Winding Up The Tree Project

Fabriano Sketchbook 8.5" x 11"

Pencil Crayon

The Native Tree Project is winding up (or down).  I'm enjoying my neighbourhood walks more as I can identify different varieties of trees, although they are mostly non-native.

I'm starting my next project soon, which has evolved out of this one.  I want to learn about plant families, and I've just begun my research.